Tag Archives: success

More than a month from its start, the STAR adventure is in full development, and the 30 high school students passionately keep working on the software applications. We are happy to see that the Scoala de Valori and 1&1 project has had such a success with the youngsters and has been so very welcomed by all the participants!

Every once in a while, no matter how devoured by the daily dynamics of software development we get, we feel the need to turn to the present, to the communities around us. In the end this is where all those belonging to the big 1&1 Romania team come from, right? And if that is the case, wouldn’t it be ok to scan and scrutinize time and ask ourselves who our future colleagues are; who are those who may come work along our side in a few years?

Together with Scoala de Valori, 1&1 Romania has asked itself this very question. And they joined forces in starting an initiative that would target teenagers with a passion for software development.

You find it hard to follow up with your responsibilities? Having problems organizing your daily tasks? Your memory is not always helping you? Not anymore!

Whether you’re familiar or not with the Agile methodologies, Kanban can (and will) help you sort, prioritize and organize each of your responsibilities.

All you have to do is to create an account here and then start configuring your own board. It’s up to you to choose the appropriate approach. You can use one for yourself or you can share a board with your colleagues from the dedicated team.

This article is an interview of our Product Management Trainee from the RAIN Development Romania department. Brunna is from Brazil; she is working in Romania as a trainee for a period of six months. She is sharing insights into the common struggles of a traineeship abroad.

What is like being a trainee in 1&1 Internet Development?

This is a unique experience for me. First of all because the culture is totally different from mine. When I arrived in 1&1 Internet Development I was cuddled by everyone, both the HR from the company and my colleagues from RAIN project gave me all the support I needed. Brazilian people are known for being good hosts and if I have to compare them with the Romanian ones I’ll have some trouble. Also, if you’re going to visit a Romanian house, you’d better be hungry! 🙂

Some of our rare spare time we, Andrea O. and myself – two people who love reading books- spend bookcrossing. We breathe life into books instead of letting them collect dust in a shelf. Bookcrossing is a community of book lovers who release books “into the wild” and then follow their journeys.

People who “catch” a wild book follow the instructions on the label to go to bookcrossing.com to see where the book has been and to make a new journal entry so that other Bookcrossers know it’s in good hands. After they have read it, they release the book again on park benches, in shops, in phone booths… as long as others can find it.

Or we share our books with other members sending them around, so as many members as possible can read them.

Why are we passionate?

It is great fun to see that our books are free and bring joy to people would never have thought to get a book for free.

When trust between business partners disappears the business may very well disappear too or, best case scenario, the partners may break up and follow different roads. At first, the one who suffers is the performance of the team and the debates will be shadowed by suspicions and assumptions.

Jurgen Appelo in Management 3.0 has a theory on how many types of trust exist within a team (source http://www.management30.com/).
In a few words there are FOUR:
– Trust in your own person that you can make it;
– Trust in the same level colleagues;
– Manager’s trust in the team members;
– The trust of the team in the manager;
Which is the most important one? Which one should never disappear?
I believe they are all equally important and should be treated accordingly inside any team.
From the manager’s point of view his trust in the team disappears (or has already disappeared ?) when he starts playing the policeman, implementing tracking and controlling actions.
The team will respond in its turn with the same suspicions, embracing a more circumspect and reserved position.
How do we get here? Stress, insufficiently trained managers, teams that never reached the norming stage.

My first grasp of the toxicity level for a project template was many years ago, during a meeting (which, taking into account the fees of the participants, wasted more than 2000 Euros per hour), its topic being the template (with capital T) about to be used for gathering some trivial piece of information. Should we keep the X area? It doesn’t seem to apply in our case … I say we should; if it’s there, we might need it. Let’s leave it as it is and we’ll figure out what to write there. And so on and so forth, hour by hour. No wonder this type of experiences make the practitioners want to run away (when can we work if we sit in meetings all day long?) only when hearing about project management. The problem is that the opposite – anarchy – is just as bad as a strict setup.

If by Project Management Professional (PMP) we understand a la carte project management we now have the question of the century!

But what’s the difference between them to begin with?

I’ve asked myself this question a while ago, when preparing for a combined course (Agile and PMP), and was surprise to find myself lacking any convenient answer. I’ve searched the internet and found an interesting distinction between them: while PMI is a standard, Agile is a framework. You may find the complete article here: Difference between PMP, PRINCE2 and Scrum/Agile.

Your first line of defense on the Web is creating the strongest password possible to protect your computer, your data and your online accounts. That may sound like common sense, but hackers have become increasingly sophisticated at password “cracking.”